JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
As it turns out there is a low-level significant assembly of published German art and book covers here in the Rancho Deluxe--its not a collection because that would imply too much order; it is barely an assembly. There's just a lot of it here, segregated, because I liked whatever it was/is.
These are some examples of a life-underground, or underground actions, that appeared in the pages of the great illustrated newspaper, the Illustrirte Zeitung.
The first is by Willi Munch(-khe), a Jugendstil artist (1885-1961), a very expressive, and dark, interpretation of what should be done with German politicians in the ripe days following the end of WWI. This image, published aorund 1922/23, shows a decorated and fancy spats-wearing politician being booted into the hole of hell. The book he is carrying (Geheme Kabinet-Politik Aller Landes/Secret Political Rules of Our Country or thereabouts), seems to be broken, its pages spilling out to feed the fires of the nasty inferno, lighting and heating the way for the failing pol as the devils and monsters await his arrival, much to the controlled agreement of the monster-y spectators in the hell galleries.
We can guess why the man/symbol is being sent to the ring of fire--the tattered, worn, hobnailed boot with the old patched pants above, the myriad of tombstones, the water-filled bomb craters,m the completely shattered trees, the bombed out cities, and of course the witches and death riding a speckled fire-breathing horse in a dark sky, pretty much round out the picture of "why". Several years after the end of the war and into a problematic realm of the democratic Weimar Republic, and just freshly into the hyperinflation that wiped out whatever the middle class had managed to save (banknote denominations climbing to literally astronomical levels, reaching 1x1014), there was a lot to complain about.
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